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Hi,

I'm studying python via the exellent book "How to think like a python
programmer" by Allen Downey.

Noob question follows...

animals.txt is a list of animals, each on a separate line: "aardvard,
bat, cat, dog, elephant, fish, giraffe, horse, insect, jackelope"

I want to loop through the list of words and print words that don't
have any "avoid" letter in them.

def hasnolet(avoid):
fin = open('animals.txt')
for line in fin:
word = line.strip()
for letter in avoid:
if letter in word:
break
else:
print word

hasnolet('abcd')

Why doesn't the function above work? It returns:

dog
dog
dog
fish
fish
fish
fish
horse
horse
horse
horse
inchworm
inchworm


thanks for any help.

takayuki

In article
<a0ff2569-a1a9-44c3-a68a->,
takayuki <> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm studying python via the exellent book "How to think like a python
> programmer" by Allen Downey.
>
> Noob question follows...
>
> animals.txt is a list of animals, each on a separate line: "aardvard,
> bat, cat, dog, elephant, fish, giraffe, horse, insect, jackelope"
>
> I want to loop through the list of words and print words that don't
> have any "avoid" letter in them.
>
> def hasnolet(avoid):
> fin = open('animals.txt')
> for line in fin:
> word = line.strip()
> for letter in avoid:
> if letter in word:
> break
> else:
> print word
>
> hasnolet('abcd')
>

I could give you a fish, or I could teach you to fish. I'd rather do the
latter. So...

Take your inner loop:

> for letter in avoid:
> if letter in word:
> break
> else:
> print word

and instrument it so you can see exactly what's happening. Try something
like:

> for letter in avoid:
> print "letter = %s" % letter
> if letter in word:
> print "it's in word"
> break
> else:
> print "no it's not"
> print word

and see if that helps.

On 09:23, lunedì 16 giugno 2008 takayuki wrote:

> word = line.strip()
Try
word= line.split()

and at the end of the loop add one more print to go to new line.
--
Mailsweeper Home : http://it.geocities.com/call_me_not_now/index.html

takayuki wrote:


> for letter in avoid:
> if letter in word:
> break
> else:
> print word

Take the word 'dog', for example. What the above loop is doing is
basically this:

1. for letter in avoid uses 'a' first
2. is 'a' in 'dog'?
3. no, so it prints 'dog'
4. go back to for loop, use 'b'
5. is 'b' in 'dog'?
6. no, so it prints 'dog' again
7. go back to for loop.....

Since it goes sequentially through 'abcd', it will say that the first
three letters are not in 'dog', and therefore print it three times. Then
it finally sees that 'd' *is* in dog, so it skips it the fourth time
through the loop.

takayuki wrote:

> inchworm
> inchworm

P.S. Why does 'inchworm' only print twice? Or is that not the full output?

Thanks to everyone for the excellent advice.

Roy: I did as you suggested and could see after staring at the output
for awhile what was going on. The print statements really helped to
put a little light on things. Yes, I agree that "learning to fish" is
the best way.

John: There were two "inchworms" because "c" is in "inchworm" so it
shouldn't print. Thanks for your detailed description of the for
loop.

The Saint: i'll check out the word = line.split() command.


After much flailing about, here's a loop that is working:

def hasnolet2(avoid):
fin = open('animals.txt')
for line in fin:
word = line.strip()

length = len(avoid)
x = 0
noprint = 0

while length -1 >= x:
if avoid[x] in word:
noprint = noprint + 1
x = x + 1

if noprint == 0:
print word

hasnolet2('abcd')

which should return:
fish
horse


hasnolet2('abcd')

On Jun 16, 2:35*pm, takayuki <lawtonp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> def hasnolet2(avoid):
> * * * * fin = open('animals.txt')
> * * * * for line in fin:
> * * * * * * * * word = line.strip()
>
> * * * * length = len(avoid)
> * * * * x = 0
> * * * * noprint = 0
>
> * * * * while length -1 >= x:
> * * * * * * * * if avoid[x] in word:
> * * * * * * * * * * * * noprint = noprint + 1
> * * * * * * * * x = x + 1
>
> * * * * if noprint == 0:
> * * * * * * * * print word

There seems to be an indendation problem (presumably the code from
length = len(avoid) onwards should be inside the loop). But apart from
that, we can try to make this more 'pythonic'.

First, python has a 'for' statement that's usually better than using
while. We use the 'range' function that produces the numbers 0, 1, ...
length - 1, and x takes the value of these in turn.

Here's the last bit of your code rewritten like this:

noprint = 0

for x in range(length):
if avoid[x] in word:
noprint += 1

if noprint == 0:
print word

But better, rather than using 'x' as an index, we can loop over
letters in avoid directly. I've changed 'noprint' to be a boolean
'should_print' too here.

should_print = True
for letter in avoid:
if letter in word:
should_print = False

if should_print:
print word

We can eliminate 'should_print' completely, by using 'break' and
'else'. A break statement in a loop causes the loop to end. If the
loop doesn't break, the 'else' code is run when the loop's over.

for letter in avoid:
if letter in word:
break
else:
print word

This is almost the same as your original code, but the 'else' is
attached to the 'for' rather that the 'if'!

Finally, in Python 2.5 you can write this:

if not any(letter in word for letter in avoid):
print word

I think this is the best solution, as it's readable and short.

--
Paul Hankin

"takayuki" <> wrote in message
news:ba3ce6db-6d2b-4de4-b1d2-...
> John: There were two "inchworms" because "c" is in "inchworm" so it
> shouldn't print. Thanks for your detailed description of the for
> loop.

lol, I even sat there looking at the word and said to myself "ok, it doesn't
contain any of the four letters"

"takayuki" <> wrote in message
news:a0ff2569-a1a9-44c3-a68a-...
> fin = open('animals.txt')
> for line in fin:

You can write this as:

for line in open('animals.txt'):
#do stuff

Of course, you can't explicitly close the file this way, but that probably
doesn't matter. Another way, I think, is to wrap the for loops in this:

with open('animals.txt') as file:
#for loop stuff here

On Jun 16, 7:17 am, Paul Hankin <paul.han...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2:35 pm, takayuki <lawtonp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > def hasnolet2(avoid):
> > fin = open('animals.txt')
> > for line in fin:
> > word = line.strip()
>
> > length = len(avoid)
> > x = 0
> > noprint = 0
>
> > while length -1 >= x:
> > if avoid[x] in word:
> > noprint = noprint + 1
> > x = x + 1
>
> > if noprint == 0:
> > print word
>
> There seems to be an indendation problem (presumably the code from
> length = len(avoid) onwards should be inside the loop). But apart from
> that, we can try to make this more 'pythonic'.
>
> First, python has a 'for' statement that's usually better than using
> while. We use the 'range' function that produces the numbers 0, 1, ...
> length - 1, and x takes the value of these in turn.
>
> Here's the last bit of your code rewritten like this:
>
> noprint = 0
>
> for x in range(length):
> if avoid[x] in word:
> noprint += 1
>
> if noprint == 0:
> print word
>
> But better, rather than using 'x' as an index, we can loop over
> letters in avoid directly. I've changed 'noprint' to be a boolean
> 'should_print' too here.
>
> should_print = True
> for letter in avoid:
> if letter in word:
> should_print = False
>
> if should_print:
> print word
>
> We can eliminate 'should_print' completely, by using 'break' and
> 'else'. A break statement in a loop causes the loop to end. If the
> loop doesn't break, the 'else' code is run when the loop's over.
>
> for letter in avoid:
> if letter in word:
> break
> else:
> print word
>
> This is almost the same as your original code, but the 'else' is
> attached to the 'for' rather that the 'if'!
>
> Finally, in Python 2.5 you can write this:
>
> if not any(letter in word for letter in avoid):
> print word
>
> I think this is the best solution, as it's readable and short.
>
Alternatively, you could use sets:

if not(set(word) & set(avoid)):
print word

(parentheses added for clarity.)